Plant Heritage’s collection of Nerine sarniensis will be on display with many plants for sale at the Nerine Festival which runs for a fortnight from today.
‘We started in 2000, so this is our 26th year, and it’s always around this time of the year because that’s when the nerines come into flower,’ said festival organiser Rose Rankilor.
‘We started to have a really quite good collection and we thought it’d be nice to share it with people in Guernsey so they could come and have a look, because a lot of people don’t quite realise all the different colours.
‘They think that pink ones that grow in people’s gardens are Guernsey lilies, and of course they’re not – they are nerines, but they’re not Guernsey lilies.
‘Guernsey lilies are a sort of bright orangey-red colour.
‘But the joy of them is that when the sun is shining, the petals sparkle, which is quite unusual for a flower and in the orangey-red ones it’s a gold sparkle, with a silver sparkle on the white and the pink ones.’
This year the Guernsey lilies flowered earlier than usual.
‘It’s because of the summer that we’ve had, it was very hot and then it’s a combination of day length and temperature,’ said Mrs Rankilor.
‘We do a big water, we only water a little bit because they’re dormant in the summer, and then we start with a big water in about the middle of August where we fill our pots up with water and let it drain right out.
'We do that each week and that’s the combination of everything that triggers them into growth.’
From today until Saturday 24 October the Nerine Festival will be open every day at Guernsey Gardens in La Ramee from 10am until 4pm.
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